Surnames and Ancestry in Scotland

Many people who are interested in their ancestry think that
surnames provide infallible guides to family relationships and to
pedigree. This, however, is true only within certain limits, and
the whole subject of surnames and their connection with kinship is
surrounded by misconceptions. Most of the more serious and
prevalent errors arise from a failure to appreciate the ways in
which surnames arose and the stages by which they became
stabilised.

There are four main sources of surnames:

Surnames from Place Names

Surnames from a Craft or Occupation

Patrynomic Names i.e. Names from Father

Names based on the Landlord's Name

Surnames from Place Names

Many surnames are place-names and originated with a man who
lived in or came from a place, sometimes a big district like Moray
(Murray) or Lothian, often a small rural community. A proprietor
was particularly likely to take his name from his estate, but
tenants and others also took their names from their places of
residence. Clearly a number of individuals and ultimately of
families could originate in the same place and take their names
from it without being related to each other. Besides, the same or
similar names were given to different places, and this means that
individuals or families who came from different parts of the
country and shared neither blood nor territorial affinity could
nevertheless have the same surname. Thus anyone called Calder (or
its variant Caddell) may derive from an ancestor resident in Calder
in West Lothian, Calder (or Cadder) in Lanark- shire, Calder (or
Cawdor)in Nairnshire or Calder in Caithness. Similarly, there is no
necessary relationship among the many families called Blair, a
place-name which occurs in at least a dozen different areas.

Surnames from a Craft or
Occupation

There are surnames which derive from a craft or occupation.
Smith, which is the most common name in Scotland, is an outstanding
example, and Wright, Baxter or Baker, Tailor, Carpenter, Mason,
Shepherd, Slater, are among the many others. It would clearly be
the height of absurdity to think that one single smith was the
ancestor of all the people now bearing the name Smith. The same is
true when a name of this type arose in the Highlands, where a
designation Coinneach Gobha (Kenneth the smith) gave rise to the
surname Gow. Any argument for relationship, based upon surnames of
this type, must be treated with extreme reserve.

Surnames from a Personal Quality or
Nickname

The third group is the epithet or nickname, originally
descriptive of some individual, such as Little, Meikle (that is,
Big), Brown, White, Gray, Black. The Gaelic donn (brown-haired) was
one possible source of the surname Dunn; Campbell is caimbeul
(crooked-mouthed) and Cameron is camshron (crooked-nosed). Grant is
presumably the French grand, equivalent to the Scots Meikle. Once
again it would be far beyond the bounds of possibility that a
single 'little Richard' or Richard Little was the progenitor of all
the Littles now to be found in a Directory. The fact must be
stressed that almost any surname could arise quite independently at
different times and in different places.

Patrynomic Names i.e. Names from
Father

The fourth group and the one which perhaps causes most
misunderstanding is the surname of patronymic origin. These are the
names usually represented in Lowland Scotland by the suffix - son,
but with them must be taken the Christian names which have become
surnames and are really truncated patronymics - Henry, Mitchell
(for Michael) and Arthur, for instance.

The development of names of this type was rather more subtle than
it was in the first three categories. In a society which had
genuine patronymic practice the designation changed generation by
generation. Robert's son might be John Robertson, his son Andrew
Johnson, his son Peter Anderson, and so on. This system was general
in all the northern lands, and it extended to women, with forms
which would translate as, for example, Elspeth Johnsdaughter. In
Denmark, Sweden and Norway the practice came to an end at varying
dates between the sixteenth century and the nineteenth, but in
Iceland it still continues. In Shetland it persisted in many
families until the nineteenth century, so that one finds, among
numerous examples, Arthur Anderson (d. 1855), son of Andrew
Robertson, James Manson (d. 1875), son of Magnus Olason, and
(though this was becoming rarer) Marion Alexandersdaughter (d.
1857); illogically, women were now using the suffix - son, as in
Isabella Johnson, daughter of John Williamson.

Throughout most of Lowland Scotland genuine patronymic practice
went out in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. What happened
was that an individual decided (or some authority decided for him)
that he would adopt his father's patronymic as his own surname, so
that the son of John Robertson called himself not Andrew Johnson
but Andrew Robertson, and from that point Robertson became the
surname of his descendants. It was clearly a matter of chance in
which generation the patronymic was, as it were, 'frozen' to make
it a surname. In the instance just given, if the decision had been
taken a generation later the surname of the family would have been
Johnson and not Robertson. This simple fact, which is far too
seldom remembered, makes nonsense of any attempt to use such
surnames of patronymic form as guides to more remote ancestry and
of any belief that there is an affinity among the holders of such a
name. Half-a-dozen Robertsons, shall we say, are probably descended
from half-a-dozen different Roberts who lived in different parts of
the country at different times and have no ground at all for
claiming kinship with each other; not only so, but it is only
chance that they are called Robertson and not, shall we say,
Johnson or Anderson.

Mac or Mc : Son of the Father

In the Highlands, where 'son of' was denoted by the prefix 'Mac
- ' rather than by the suffix ' - son', patronymic names were
commoner than they were in the Lowlands and seem indeed to have
been the general form of designation. The 'Mac - ' could be
prefixed to craft names as well as Christian names, giving, for
example, 'Mac an t-saoir', son of the joiner, which became
Macintyre, and also the group of names denoting descent from an
ecclesiastic: Macnab, Mactaggart, Macpherson and Macvicar, meaning
son of the abbot, the priest, the parson and the vicar.

Designations were carried into two or three stages, by the use of
'Vic - ' (mhic, the genitive of mac), and could represent in effect
potted pedigrees. Sixteenth-century examples are Angus MacDonald
Vic Angus, son of Donald MacAngus, and Alastair MacAllane Vic Ane
Vic Coull, and there is a splendid example in 1617: Hector
MacGorrie Vic Achan Vic Allester Vic Ean duff, son of Gorrie
MacAchan Vic Allester Vic Ean duff. In women's names, 'Nean'
(nighean), meaning 'daughter of', could take the place of 'Mac',
giving patronymics like Margaret nean Ean glas Vic Ilespig.
Designations of this type, recorded in official registers, were not
surnames, and, while individuals so recorded may have had surnames
(as will be shown below), their surnames are not used in the
record, and identification may consequently be difficult for the
researcher. For instance, but for their territorial designation 'of
Lochiel' would anyone know that the men recorded in the
mid-sixteenth century as Ewan Allanson, John Dow, his son, and
Ewan, his grandson, were in fact all Camerons? The use of genuine
patronymics in records continued well into the eighteenth century:
for example, in South Uist in 1721 we find names like John MacEwan
Vic Ean Vic Charles and Murdo MacNeil Vic Ean Vic Duill.

On the other hand, not only were certain Highland families
recorded by surnames from a fairly early date, but the prefix 'Mac
- ' could mean not only 'son of' but also 'descendant of', and to
that extent such a patronymic, persisting generation by generation,
could be 'frozen' as a surname. An obvious example is MacDonald.
Angus of the Isles, in the later thirteenth century, was the son of
Donald, and his successors retained the 'style' MacDonald, perhaps
not so much as a surname in the modern sense but as a mark of their
descent; but (as will appear later) the vast majority of the
numerous MacDonalds of later times had no kinship with the
descendants of Angus or necessarily even derive from anyone called
Donald at all.

The persistence of the patronymic, sometimes at unofficial level,
into modern times is explained by the need to confer ready means of
identification in small communities where a particular surname is
common. Names indicating either parentage or place of residence are
commonly given for this reason, forming the 'to-names' of the
fishing communities of the north-east (a term identical with the
tilnavn of Scandinavia) and similar names elsewhere. Perhaps the
most picturesque and cryptic examples occurred in the Borders:
'John Bell called Quhitheid', 'Edward Bell called the Dansair',
'John Bell called Ranyis Johnne', and - incredibly - 'Andrew Irvin
called Tailyeour curst Geordie'.

The process by which the genuine surname took the place of
personal designations which changed from generation to generation
took a long time to complete, and there are instances throughout
the sixteenth century, in almost any part of the country, which
show that some people still had more than one designation and it
may be hard to say which if any of t e designations was even yet a
real surname, When we find a man with a
t an the name of his actual occupation; but with 'William Davidson
or Litstar' and 'Matthew Paterson or Litstar', both of whom were
priests, the tstar' (i.e. dyer) is clearly a surname. And in the
case of 'Andrew Wilson or Tailor, the son of Andrew Wilson', the
name 'Wilson' is a genuine surname, whatever 'Tailor' may be. Even
in the late sixteenth century we find an occupational name being
adopted as a surname, for Andrew Strachan, who happened to be a
gardener at Falkland, had a son who was styled 'John Strachan or
Gardener' and a grandson who was 'George Strachan or Gardener'. We
also find a surname originating in a place-name combined with a
patronymic, in 'Alexander Murray or Angus- son'. In Orkney and
Shetland in the late sixteenth century men were still often known
simply by their places of residence, e.g. John of Aywick, and,
while some of them were later known by patronymics, others,
especially in Orkney, adopted the place-name as their
surname.

Names based on the Landlord's Name

One very important qualification to any attempt to use surnames
as guides to pedigree arises from the fact that right on to the
eighteenth century at least, there was a tendency, perhaps more
especially in the Highlands though not only there, for men to adopt
the surname of their landlord as their own surname, and one
consequence was that when a man moved from one estate to another he
might change his name. In the 1750s it was related that 'John
MackDonell... was really and truly a Campbell, having changed his
name to that of MacDonell upon his coming to live in the bounds and
under the protection of the family of Glengary, it being the usual
custom for those of a different name to take the name of the
chieftain under whom they live'. The use of the landlord's name as
a man's own explains why in the 1580s a servant of the Earl of
Huntly was called 'Gordon or Page' - Gordon because his master,
Huntly, was a Gordon and Page because he (or his ancestor) was in
truth a page.

Surnames Could Change over Time

Occasionally we find a switch from one kind of designation to
another: thus in the 1470s the three sons of Thomas Soutar were
David, John and Thomas Thomson, and whether their descendants were
Soutars or Thomsons we cannot say. There was, besides, a tendency
for people to give up the more outlandish names and adopt names
which were familiar or distinguished. It seems, to take a curious
example, that the Scandinavian Sigurdsson, which became Shuardson
in Shetland, was Scotticised as Stewartson and finished as Stewart.
How true it is that not all Stewarts are 'sib' (related) to the
king. And, besides, some Stewarts presumably descend from the
stewards of this or that estate and not from royal Stewards, just
as Baillies descend from bailies of various estates. Neither can we
be certain that all the holders of that other royal name, Bruce,
descend from the same ancestor. True, the name originated in a
place-name in Normandy, and it is unlikely that more than one
family came to Scotland from there, but, apart from the tenants of
Bruces who may have adopted their laird's name, it may be suspected
that some originally had the less glamorous name of
Brewhouse.
Some other pitfalls may be mentioned. It was far from rare for a
man to change his name on inheriting or otherwise acquiring landed
property, and indeed charters sometimes laid it down that the
proprietor must bear a certain name; and for similar reasons
husbands sometimes took their wives' names. In each of those cases
the surname ceased to be a guide to more remote ancestry.

Mac and Mc: No Difference

One very elementary error is to believe that there is some
significance in variant spellings o f the same name, for example
Clerk and Clark, Burnet and Burnett, Gray and Grey, or, in certain
Highland names, the variation between Mac - and Mc - and between
the use of a capital or a small letter in the second part of the
name, e.g. MacLean and Maclean. The truth is that until a matter of
two and a half centuries ago the spelling of proper names, as of
other words, was quite arbitrary. Different scribes used different
spellings, the same scribe used different spellings within the same
document, an individual would spell his own name in different ways
on different occasions. So no significance whatever must be
attached to different spellings as indicative of ancestry or
relationship. It was simply a matter of chance, as spelling did
become standardised, that certain families adopted particular
spellings and other families, possibly closely related to them,
adopted different spellings.

Other Spelling Differences

On the other hand, similar spellings may confuse what are in
truth totally different names. Livingston is a Lowland name, of
West Lothian origin, but Livingstone is a Highland name, and there
is no relation between the two. Similarly, 'Johnson' is a
patronymic name, 'Johnston' derives from John's 'toun' or
settlement, while 'Johnstone' might originate in the name of some
landmark; there are three different names. Some Camerons - perhaps
most - are Highland Camerons from Lochiel, but others must take
their names from the places called Cameron in Lothian and Fife.
Dewar and Shaw are other examples of names with distinct Highland
and Lowland origins, and Dunn, while it may derive from Gaelic
donn, may equally well derive from the place Dun in Angus. The
distinction between a Highland and Lowland origin has often been
effaced when a Gaelic name has been translated into English, so
that MacNeacail becomes Nicolson and MacGille-mhoire becomes
Morison - which means that they are added to the host of unrelated
patronymics spanning the whole country and with no affinity among
them.

Names in Official Records

We might expect that the compilers of official records would
always have a consistent preference for a recognised surname over
other designations, but this was not entirely so, and their
practice may well have been based on no more than the purely
utilitarian one of using the designation which would most clearly
identify the individual. Thus some of the examples of Highland
patronymics given above are from the Register of Sasines and the
Register of the Privy Seal. On the other hand, there is some reason
to believe that the official recording of names had a certain
influence towards stabilising surnames, and in some areas the
establishment of the Register of Sasines in 1617 clearly had some
effect. Variation of names further declined because ministers, in
their registers of baptisms, marriages and burials, preferred names
which they did not think outlandish, and in the Highlands many
names indicative of remote ancestry were lost because ministers had
difficulty in recording Gaelic names unfamiliar to them and
substituted names which had well established Anglicised forms. In
so far as variation survived into the nineteenth century it was
further curbed by the compulsory registration of births, marriages
and deaths from 1855, because Registrars began to insist that an
individual must use the same surname as his father had used.

The numerous complexities, and the many uncertainties, mean that
casual assumptions or guesses about kinship and descent, based
solely on surnames, are no substitute for serious research into
ancestry.